Critical Response to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

Introduction

In the year 1990 Houghton Mifflin published the book “The Things They Carried” in hardcover which was written by Tim O'Brien. This book presented a classical collection of various stories about the American soldiers present in the platoon which fought in the Vietnam War. The style of narration used by Tim O'Brien was metafiction as according to him it is the best mean of communicating the truth. Majority of the characters portrayed in the book are narrating in a semi - autobiographical manner. The book has been positively criticized by the critiques and is considered as one of the best literatures upon the Vietnam War. The book highlights various themes in the short narrations which have been identified by Tim O'Brien's personnel experiences but presented in a fictional manner which attracts the reader and hides the true identity of the soldier as well (Chen, 1998, p. 79). The main theme with which we are concerned is the Physical and emotional Burdens we carry ion our lives.

Discussion

Tim O'Brien has been largely credited for his unique style of writing the main reason behind this attraction of large audience was the way Tim presented his characters as the characters not only represented the literal meaning of the narration but a figurative touch was also present in the narration of characters. As we describe the general idea of the book the soldiers which were present in the scenario were carrying extensive physical loads as they were fighting in the war but at the same time each of the soldiers were carrying a far greater emotional load at the stage of war which was overshadowed by the physical load and pressure they were handling during the war days.

The emotional load upon every character presented by Tim was varying and was largely dependent upon the mental state and history of the soldier some were grieved because of love emotions, others had terror of dying and losing the war while few were grieved of the soldiers they had lost in the war. An example of the emotional strain is of Henry Robbins who was grieved because of longing and spending so many days away from his girl friend and was desperately missing his life partner. On the contrary Jimmy Cross was also carrying an emotional burden but totally different from that of Henry Robbins as he was responsible for all his soldiers he was emotionally stressed for the responsibility of his soldiers (Smith, 1994, p. 16 - 40).

At the same time the men who were fighting in the war had other emotional burdens they were not only terrified to die and leave their families dependent upon the societies but were more stressed for their reputation in the platoon which was dependent upon their performance in the war. Tim at the same time portrays the most appropriate theory for the soldiers who describes that the emotional fear and stress of the soldiers was weakening them as it not only ...